(1) Field of the Invention
The method and the apparatus of the present invention is related to the field of electronic timers. More specifically, the present invention is related to a method and apparatus for managing the electronic calendars of personnel throughout an enterprise or for managing events in a distributed system.
(2) Prior Art
Currently, there are many tools available to help manage a person's daily activities. For example, there are simple diaries which may be purchased at a stationary store consisting of individual pages in a notebooklike format with each page having the day of each month in a year. Such a diary may be utilized to keep one's to do lists and reminders for each day. Additionally, there are different types of software currently available which accomplish the task of helping a user keep a record of his or her appointments. Such software is implemented as components of electronic calendar of personal digital assistants such as the Apple Newton and the Hewlett Packard Palmtop.
The disadvantage with currently available electronic calendars is that they only provide minimum support for interaction amongst electronic calendar users in a large organization. For example, Sun Microsystems's Calendar Manager, is an example of an electronic calendar which provides a user with a capability to browse other employee's calendars in the company and to look for mutually free times in order to make appointments with other users. Although the Calendar Manager provides browsing, it does not offer any additional significant enterprise oriented capability.
FIG. 1 illustrates a set of functionalities typically available on traditional electronic calendars. Traditional electronic calendar 100 accepts user or event inputs of to do lists 102 and appointment entries 104. Traditional electronic calendar 100 also provides browsing capability 106 and outputs reminders 108 to the user. Although some electronic calendars may provide interaction 110 with other electronic calendars, such interaction 110 is minimal. For example, some traditional electronic calendars 100 may provide an e-mail capability allowing for users to send and receive electronic mail. Thus, the interaction currently available amongst multiple users of electronic calendars is very limited.
The lack of support in currently available electronic calendars for an enterprise such as a large organization requires each individual electronic calendar user to perform extra tasks burdening them with administrative details. For example, if a user A desires to have a meeting with users B and C, user A must determine a date on which both users B and C will be able to meet. To this end, user A must browse through users B and C's calendars to determine the most convenient time for all three to meet at the same time. It would be much more efficient if user A only had to input minimum information regarding his or her desire to meet with users B and C in order to set up the meeting. More specifically, it would be desirable for an electronic calendar to be able to schedule a meeting automatically if given certain minimal parameters, such as the names of users requested to attend the meeting and a range of dates within which the meeting should be held.
The above example is only one of many functions which would be desired in an electronic calendar used in an enterprise setting. Such an electronic calendar can improve overall efficiency of an enterprise by automating enterprise oriented tasks. A method and an apparatus using new enterprise electronic calendar protocols to provide enterprise oriented capabilities to an electronic calendar are therefore desired. These same protocols also have application for the management of events in a distributed system.